The British pub is part of our national identity, but rising taxes is threatening their existence. When an article from The Telegraph brought in 130 times more subscriptions than expected, the team analysed audience behaviour to understand its success – and uncovered a gap in the market. Armed with this insight, the audience development team made a strategic case to expand The Telegraph’s pubs journalism and collaborated with editorial to transform it into a growth and engagement engine.

By identifying untapped opportunities for distinctive, high-utility journalism – as The Telegraph have done with pubs – the team isn’t chasing fleeting traffic: they’re engineering an ecosystem for audience engagement and growth by purposefully deepening their relationship with readers. The audience development team is designing a user journey that seeks to transform a singe search query or social post into a lifelong subscriber relationship.

Based on this strategy, Travel developed ‘500 Pubs’, a beautifully designed directory of recommendations from The Telegraph’s pubs experts, Will Hawkes. Working with Travel, the audience development team purposefully integrated engagement features, including upvotes, comments, and readers’ reviews. They targeted social promotion at local communities and created 500 bespoke assets for featured landlords to share on their local Facebook pages, substantially increasing the product’s reach.

The focus then shifted from reach to deep engagement. The team analysed comments and found that readers care greatly about preserving British pub culture. This insight was translated into ‘Save Our Pubs,’ a cross-departmental campaign spanning News, Business, Features, Comment, and Money. The team ought in journalists to the comments to debate with readers and invited subscribers to a live Daily T recording in a Dorset pub. By featuring readers’ stories prominently, they built a community-backed campaign so influential that Rachel Reeves credited Telegraph readers with inspiring her pub rescue package.

By grounding the work in deep insight into on- and off-platform audience behaviour and nurturing strong relationships with editorial, the audience development team have transformed a single article into a powerhouse of growth, engagement, and influence.

Thanks to this strategic positioning and targeted promotion both on- and off-platform, 500 Pubs drove 300 times more subscriber acquisition and 39 times more registrations than the average Travel piece in 2025. It was The Telegraph’s most shared article, beating the biggest News exclusive by 25%.

Save Our Pubs engaged the audience further. From The Editor, The Telegraph’s flagship newsletter, saw a significant spike in open rate among non-subscribers when we led with “It’s time to save the British pub.” The team successfully activated subscribers through community features, generating over 50,000 comments in the first month and rivalling many of the major political subjects.

The strategy was effective at converting passive readers into first-time active commenters, and The Telegraph ended the period with not just a larger audience, but a more close-knit community. One subscriber invited others to join him at his favourite pub: “I’ll buy you a drink and toast The Telegraph campaign.”

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